Sichuan Snack House

Hi!

Me and my partner lived in Chengdu, China for the last three years and fell in love with Sichuan (aka Szechuan) cuisine. Our favourite meal was of course hot pot, but coming in a close second was the street food. While walking to work still half asleep, or stumbling back from the KTV at 3AM, on every street corner there would be traders selling the local snacks from the back of their bicycle or hand pulled cart. My go-to was a dish called guoba tudou (crispy potatoes). Basically it's crinkle cut chips coated with a variety of herbs, spices and seasonings.

When we returned to the UK in March we were disappointed at how difficult it was - even in big cities - to find even the classic dishes like Mapo tofu or Dandan noodles. Fortunately I predicted this may be the case so I took a course at a well respected culinary school in Chengdu (新东方) to learn the basics of Sichuan cooking. This experience, comibned with the knowledge learnt from Lei's family, has proved invaluable when trying to recreate our favourite dishes as authentically as possible.

Our goal in starting this business is simply to share our love of Chengdu street food and its culture with as many people as possible. We also want to highlight the fact that there are a huge amount of Sichuan dishes that use little or no meat. This is because Sichuan province has historically been very poor, but also very fertile. This meant that meat was hard to come by but vegetables were plentiful throughout the seasons. To reflect this, our menu is entirely vegan and consists of spicy or mild guoba tudou (crispy potatoes) and shucai jiaozi (vegetable dumplings). We can't wait to bring our food to a table near you!

Joel and Lei
Sichuan Snack House